In this section, each script's functions and arguments
are discussed. There is a set of common arguments that
some of the scripts accept, and of course, each has its
own idiosyncrasies, too.
The following arguments are common to most of the components of
Cricket.
-logLevel
Default value: info (except grapher.cgi, where it defaults to
warn)
The possible values are "error", "warn", "info", or "debug". Each
setting includes the output created by any of the preceding
settings. All diagnostic output goes to the standard error stream.
-base
Default value: $HOME/cricket-config
You can use this setting to use a different config tree. Experience
shows, however, that it's simplest to just accept the defaults
and install Cricket in an account of its own.
Here's a brief description of each program, and what arguments it takes.
collector
Collector is the script that runs every five minutes from cron
in order to traverse the config tree, fetch data, and enter it
into the RRD files. It's also used interactively to test configurations,
and to convert old-style RRD files to RRD 1.x.x files.
The collector will process only the subtrees listed on the command line,
unless there are none, in which case it will process the entire config
tree.
Except during testing, collector is usually run from collect-subtrees,
which takes care of creating the huge command lines collector
sometimes needs, and does other housekeeping jobs. When testing a new
subtree of the config-tree, you can use a command like
"$HOME/cricket/collector -logLevel debug /new-tree". Once you are
certain the subtree is functioning correctly, you can add it to the
collect-subtrees config file, and rely on collect-subtrees to run the
collector for you.
grapher.cgi
Accepts common arguments.
The grapher is almost never run from the command line, so
options parsing is basically a moot point. The CGI script
should get run by the web server automatically in response
to accesses to files that end in CGI. Consult your web server
documentation to find out how to make it work like this.
Because it's not generally possible to control the command line
of grapher.cgi, it's critical that it either defaults to the
correct base directory, or that it has the base directory
hardcoded internally to it. The default base directory is
$HOME/cricket-config. However, $HOME will only be set right
if Cricket can guess it's username from it's URL. If there's
any doubt, you should hard code the base directory by editing the
first few lines of grapher.cgi.
configure
Accepts no arguments at this time.
This is basically a placeholder for when Cricket is more
complicated (say it ain't so!) and requires an autoconf-generated
configure script. At this point, it can point all the Cricket
scripts at your Perl install, which is very helpful for sites
which do not have Perl installed in a standard location.